Peter Brown is a longtime fave of mine (see, e.g., this 2015 post and my Year in Reading essay from that year), so I was pleased to see his interview with Nawal Arjini in the NYRB newsletter (archived); the whole thing is worth your while, but I’ll excerpt this particularly Hatworthy bit:
I travel because it always surprises me. Places and monuments, works of art and landscapes are never quite what one imagines them to be. Nor are people. Some of the languages useful for my research abroad are what we call “dead” languages: Latin, Greek, classical Hebrew, Coptic, Ge’ez (Ethiopic), etc. These are keys to entire past civilizations. But even in the modern world, languages are a reminder that all societies have their own surprises. To attempt to read and use languages other than one’s own, even if only a few phrases, is a mark of respect for the otherness of other people. For this reason, I have always encouraged my students of late antiquity to learn not only the classical languages but the languages in which modern scholarship has been conducted, so that they realize that historical research is a worldwide matter, and that it is many centuries old—like a great symphony that has been playing for centuries.
Preach, brother! …Oh, all right, just a couple more bits:
Each age produces its own historians with their own ways of asserting the truth. Perhaps the most urgent need we have today is to develop a sense of the strangeness of the past and a sense of urgent searching for the truth to ensure that the past is not forgotten, or flattened by being presented as so “like us”—no more than a mirror of ourselves—that it can be manipulated without challenge.
[…]
Furthermore, the study of the place of Europe in the wider world of Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia (along the Silk Road that linked the Mediterranean to China, and the great caravans that joined the Muslim cities of sub-Saharan West Africa to the Nile) challenges us to read traditional evidence in new ways and against magnificently wide horizons. I am particularly excited by the way in which recent studies of premodern Africa have added a hitherto neglected continent to our picture of the medieval world. This is particularly the case with Ethiopia, where newly discovered manuscripts, archaeological surveys, and the study of art and material culture have revealed dynamic societies at the crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, between Christianity and Islam.
You’re expecting me to weigh in by pointing out that all this is really every bit as much the case with West Africa as Ethiopia. So I will.
I think that, for all that, my favourite instance of how civilisation in Africa has never really fit in neat boxes is the mediaeval Christian kingdoms of Nubia in what is now Sudan, literate in their own Old Nubian and in Greek. (Their courts may even have been Greek-speaking.)
The first quote is a bit of a squib. To move from “keys to entire past civilizations” to “To attempt to read and use languages other than one’s own, even if only a few phrases, is a mark of respect for the otherness of other people” is a very sudden descent from the sublime to what might almost pass for tokenism.
so that they realize that historical research is a worldwide matter, and that it is many centuries old—like a great symphony that has been playing for centuries.
Very true, but don’t forget the little puddles, pools, and lakes that persist despite the homogenising effect of the great ocean (which, in our era, tends to be the “Western Ocean” or even worse, “English Ocean”). The coexistence of different “traditions” can actually be quite discordant. For example, the tension between traditional Japanese grammatical terminology and modern linguistic terminology in Japanese. The persistence of old terminology is quaint, it’s cute, it’s necessary if you want to discuss Japanese grammar, but there is a definite jump involved as you move from one set of terminology to the other.
From the introduction to Sidwell and Jenny’s brand-new survey volume, The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia, in which the current state of research is surveyed:
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That’s great, thanks for spreading the news!
DE:
… has never really fit in neat boxes …
I’m surprised (though I hold back from frank alarm, for now) to see from you this use of fit as opposed to fitted, because I thought it was almost exclusively AmE in careful prose. Bearing in mind transatlantic leakage of regional varieties in publishing, see these relevant ngrams. See also these, where “it never fit” is entirely absent for BrE. OED records no instances of “has fit” in its quotations, but eight for “has fitted”.
Speaking of “dynamic societies at the crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, between Christianity and Islam” does seem to be an attempt to interpret the past based on the present, i.e. what the author warns us against.
After all, Christianity versus Islam is a bit of an obsession these days (interpreting the results of the election in France today without referring to said obsession would be rather challenging, to put it mildly), and quite apart from the fact that the history of the pre-Christian and pre-Islamic Middle East is fascinating in and of itself, it should never be forgotten that at many points in history divisions within Christianity and Islam were each far more important (to the bulk of believers themselves as well as to their rulers) than the Christian/Muslim dichotomy.
To say nothing of lesser-known instances of intercontinental contact: Echoing David Eddyshaw’s example above, my personal favorite is the claim (which seems likely to my mind) that the Ethiopic script became a syllabary (as opposed to its ancestral consonant-only script) as a result of the influence of Brahmi, via trade contacts in the Indian Ocean.
@Etienne, my usual complaint – something that keeps annoying me since I got interested in North Africa – is the great division along the Mediterranean sea and also cutting the history of Africa itself in two, before and after the Muslim conquest.
It exists in our minds when we think of either Europe or Muslim world and it simply does not match the reality: people of the two shores have always been in contact and there is continuity between Christian/Roman North Africa and Muslim North Africa (with immense changes brought by Islam on top of this continuity).
The desire to compensate for this division is understandable (to me). Not because I’m so interested in religions – I’m tired of them – because someone else has torn the two worlds apart.
And what you’re saying (“divisions within Christianity and Islam were each far more important (to the bulk of believers themselves as well as to their rulers) than the Christian/Muslim dichotomy.”) is a part of it: yes, to the German monarch his war with French king is more important than whatever happens in the North Africa.
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Having this said, I’d rather avoid focusing on religions and even we are speaking about religions, the reqion in question is diverse in this respect. What it contains is not just “Christianity” and “Islam”.
“…, is a mark of respect for the otherness of other people.” – some people do look at it this way. Definitely I’m not against this view. Can’t share it because I eat out of hunger rather than respect to anything:)
Sadly, when a lady “from Dagestan” wrote about her relationship with her “native langauge” and I asked what language it is she responded “one of langauges of Dagestan”:((((( (about as informative as “Earthling” and “one of natural languages of Earth”). The idea that an outsider will learn somethign like Tabasaran is not even seriously considered, I think.
“…learn not only the classical languages but the languages in which modern scholarship…” – maybe less common among historians, but they too are supposed to be familiar with literature.
“so that they realize that historical research is a worldwide matter, and that it is many centuries old” – this is something general public should realise. Won’t harm:) When historians don’t, we have a problem:))*
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* on the other hand, presently there are really, really many English speakers studying history of the ME and other distant regions. This must be good for the English-speaking world.
Or maybe not “really many”? It is my subjective impression that such people are all over the place (cf. the recent Hugo nomination, which I mentioned (events of the novel take place on Soqotra) and which I won’t read, the Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi written by a lady who wanted to study the ME history).
cutting the history of Africa itself in two, before and after the Muslim conquest
While there certainly have always been some contacts between West Africa and the Mediterranean world, there isn’t really much doubt about the importance of Islam specifically in such contacts since that conquest took place.
While I take your point that all divisions of the obviously-continuous process of history have some degree of arbitrariness to them, the Muslim conquest of North Africa really did have major consequences for Africa, and pretending otherwise would be as silly as denying the before-and-after quality of the later European invasions.
Even as resolutely “pagan” a people as the Kusaasi can’t be properly understood without taking Islam into account. (As I have often mentioned, one of the Kusaasi folktales I have found clearly reflects an Arabic source, ultimately based on a Buddhist Jātaka story.)
It’s hardly disrespectful to the dignity and autonomy of African history to acknowledge the profound effects of influences that originated outside the continent. Quite the opposite, in fact. That way lies all the “darkest Africa” nonsense we know and despise.
@DE, by “history of Africa” I meant both North and sub-Saharan Africa…
I think what I wrote is more true of formerly Roman Africa (especially the word “conquest”). I don’t think anyone needs to cut the history of West Africa : first its pre-Islamic history and also that of first centuries AH is not very well known, secondly general public here is not even aware of it.
I don’t pretend that the Muslim conquest brought “immense changes”. But there are two parts here: the continuous part and the discontinuous part. “Change” itself too has a continous component. Of course the conquest brought with it (apart of Quran and the hadith) the Arabic language, certain patterns of urbanism, likely certain marriage patterns and customs etc. etc. etc.* Lots of everythign, right on the surface and obvious.
But it brought this to mostly local people.
“Over centuries they abandoned everything that makes them local and became cultural clones of people of Yemen and Dagestan” would be an oversimplification:)
So what I feel is that this continous component is ignored. We speak of these two as two worlds, and I think we should not.
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* the French conquest also changed a lot (in marriage and urbanism at least). And the Internet.
“Over centuries they abandoned…”
Also the division is instantaneous. Roman Africa was conquered and… Now it is MENA.
Augustine, Apollonius Dyscolus (pardon spelling) were both from North Africa. It’s a modern sensibility that makes me feel a bit “weirded out”, as though they don’t quite belong to our modern Western world.
I always find it harder to make coherent, lucid comments on a phone. (Or at least less fragmented, incoherent ones.)
Also Priscian.
“oblong to our modern Western world”
“to extend as to form an oblong shape” explains Wiktionary, so I spent a while imagining the oblong Western world (or Augustine) until you corrected it.
Actually “orthogonal” might work slightly better.
(The opportunity to correct comes up very slowly on my phone.)
I think Augustine is what Aramis of the three musketeers used to read in the cycle, while laying the foundation of the modern western world.
“To attempt to read and use languages other than one’s own, even if only a few phrases, is a mark of respect for the otherness of other people.”
Doesn’t this depend on the people whether it would be considered respect or not? There are American Indian languages or some dialects of Romani which are meant for in-group use only, and it is not desired that outsiders learn them. Roy Andrew Miller described Japanese in the 1970s as a language where locals would prefer that foreigners speak only a debased form of it, as becoming too proficient would feel like an intrusion into their closed society. There are young people today who are so proficient in English that they consider it, too, their own, and they so detest the sound of a bad accent in their native language, that speaking English would be regarded as the most respectful thing to do, and so on.
Roy Andrew Miller described Japanese in the 1970s as a language where locals would prefer that foreigners speak only a debased form of it, as becoming too proficient would feel like an intrusion into their closed society.
I was in Japan in the 1970s and can’t say I really struck this attitude. Jealous of their own closed view of Japaneseness but they certainly welcomed me speaking Japanese. (Or maybe I just didn’t notice.)
Yeah, Roy Andrew Miller is great fun to read but (like most raconteurs) given to exaggeration.
Are you sure you don’t mean Jack Seward?
Hmm… maybe I was thinking of Seward!
I lived in Japan in the late 1980s, and I always felt that there was a class divide. Working class Japanese were always very happy to hear me speak Japanese, very encouraging and very friendly. It was typically the university educated but not well travelled types who seemed put off when I would interact in Japanese. Whether it was a desire to keep the foreigner out (as Roy says), a sense of shame/embarassment that their own English wasn’t better, or simply greater awareness of the mistakes I was making (and thence annoyance), I can’t say. Certainly in the 1980s attention to the appropriate level of keigo was very much alive among the higher social classes, which made interaction with foreigners in Japanese very awkward. Working class Japanese seemed to not really care that much about keigo and were happy to address and be addressed by foreigners as equals.
That makes a lot of sense.
following drasvi:
to my eye, the flip side of that is the deeply bizarre ways that the history of ottoman europe (not to mention al-andalus) is generally dealt with (mostly by ignoring it or pretending it was an inconsequential interlude), which makes it damn near impossible to understand the actual history and cultural landscape. because of the particular bees in my bonnet, i see this particularly in the ways that yiddish jewish culture is shaped by the ottoman ekumene far more deeply than by the german sphere that it is almost invariably talked about in relation to (perhaps a similar linguistically-based dynamic to the one that wants to see the maghreb through a peninsular arabic lens rather than a locally oriented one).
presently there are really, really many English speakers studying history of the ME and other distant regions. This must be good for the English-speaking world.
we can hope! but i’m reading ammiel alcalay’s wonderful (so far, at least!) book ‘a little history’ right now, which is pushing me to add: it depends on what exactly is being studied, since that shapes what lines of thinking are opened up and what ones are closed off or obscured. (there’s an analogy to language-study to be made here, probably through SIL and its sister projects, i think, but i’m not going to try to spin it out)
the ways that yiddish jewish culture is shaped by the ottoman ekumene far more deeply than by the german sphere that it is almost invariably talked about in relation to
That’s an idea that this goy boy has never encountered, not even in the smallest way, when reading novels/memoirs/biographies featuring aspects of Jewish cultures in Europe and points east. “Far more deeply” is starker Tobak. Have you some specifics ?
I may have mentioned before how in pre-Castro Cuba the Jewish community was divided between the so-called Turks (“turcos,” i.e. Sephardim) and the so-called Poles (“polacos,” i.e. Ashkenazim). Many/most of los turcos had come from the Ottoman-ruled Balkans outside the borders of post-Ottoman Turkey, but as rozele suggests this may obscure the historical experience of Ashkenazim from e.g. Hungary and Roumania etc. where prior Ottoman rule was important in various ways in shaping their identity and culture.
“… that shapes what lines of thinking … ” – which is true about any education.
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A paradox that bothers me and which I haven’t solved is that when we grow up where we do, it becomes really hard for me to find a slightest shade of originality in my own thinking (or art).
On the other hand, if someone (a genius) has grown up in the jungle without even the privilege to be raised by wolves, she’d hardly ever invent airplane no matter how smart she is. Or arythmetics. Or cave paintings (beyound maybe handprints).
(Also, of course, grown up in the jungle is far from “tabula rasa”).
Oe possible solution is that even human geniuses are in reality not terribly creative:)
I say bothers, I mean that. Because we spend so much time to derail off the “lines” of thinking imposed on us.
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Back to education, obviously it can be horrible (they can just teach you something evil).
But I wonder if it can actually somehow enourage independent thinking, given how little of it I find in myself (or at least open-mindedness which seems easier).
“inconsequential interlude” – I like these words (I mean, I don’t like what they mean, but they DO describe the situation).
Perhaps has to do (or not) with how it looks from here. And from here it looks simple: “English and French traitors of Christendom did not let us complete our Reconquista (surely driven by greed*)”.
Guess for Serbs it is worse than that:)
We could add Germans… But after WWII no one will discuss WWI here.
Two associations are: a student who when they were removing Rhodes’s stautue from the University of Cape Town (I think he granted the land where it was built) appeared in the news arguing that “colonialism is not African history, it is interruption of African history”.
And whatever Arabs feel about Israel too. I don’t think I ever heard them discussing this, but I guess Israel jsut should not be here, and its contriubution in regional cultrue is not going to be appreciated or discussed.
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Obviously at the moment I’m not discussing who is right or wrong and who has a good reason for such sentiments, and whose reason is not so good.
* English and French traitors are driven by greed, not the Reconquista. Only assholes can be driven by greed, and assholes are them.